I may be misunderstanding the point of placards, but they don't seem like a particularly useful feature to me. Of course I can see the appeal of the convenience of being able to completely reconfigure your carrier in ten seconds, but they don't actually accomplish anything that isn't already accomplished by just unweaving and reweaving different pouches onto the molle. Adding and removing things from molle webbing doesn't take that long and isn't that hard.

Configuring your gear isn't really a time sensitive task that you're going to be doing under pressure. It's also a task that you're going to be doing very rarely. Setting up your plate carrier isn't like changing mags or pulling out a tourniquet, where it really matters how quickly you do it. I'm having a hard time imagining a circumstance where it really matters to be able to swap out the pouches on your front flap in ten seconds rather rather than three minutes. And direct molle is obviously more secure and rigid than velcro and two clips.

So in summary, my current view is that placards seem to be a marketing gimmick that shaves a few minutes off a task that doesn't actually need to be fast. Looking to see what other people's perspectives are on it and see if there's something I haven't thought of that might change my mind.

I think it would have been nice to be able to put a placard with 40mm or star clusters when sitting on a vehicle mounted 240 doing a convoy then switching back to rifle/pistol mags and other things when doing a DA mission without the hassle of swapping out pouches.

That being said, overall I agree with you.

I think they're extremely useful for a smaller niche in professional use. I don't know how many times I had to squeeze through a gunner's hatch wearing my turtle shell, in short, I'll say it was an arduous task w/ 7 mags, grenades, water, etc on your vest. Lord help you if you were one of the knuckleheads with an M9 on your chest(saw a few guys drop these trying to climb up into a hatch
In my day it was common to have guys mount gear on their FLC's, and take the FLC off when manning a mounted gun so you still had IOTV coverage.
If we had placards back then, at least getting your kit ready would have been that much easier.  
Another place I see their professional value is in the LEO role. A buddy of mine has a Mayflower with 2 placards in the trunk: 1 active shooter placard with medical gear, the other is heavier on ammo.

Other than that I agree w/ you OP they're a cute convenience piece but not necessary for everyone. Dunno if I'd trust placards working near water w/ regularity: sometimes velcro shits the bed when drenched/humid.

They're pretty useful in my LE capacity. Serving papers, I run my plate carrier slick. Serving arrest warrants, I'll throw a placard on with an extra rifle mag and blow out kit.

Can go from completely slick to a capable loadout of ammo and administrative items in a few seconds.

This can also be done with individual pouches, but it takes a lot longer. If I can get from A->B faster without sacrificing capability, I'll take it.

I'm glad I made this thread. This is exactly what I was hoping for. I had a feeling I might be missing something obvious, and it turns out I was.

It probably should have occurred to me that there are some niche applications where people might need to repeatedly reconfigure their plate carrier back and forth over and over again. Especially since back when I was in, my job actually did involve operating an armored vehicle with very little room inside. We just always kept our plate carriers slick, never bothered to add anything since we were almost never doing anything that required anything on the carrier.

Is that out of concern for public perception? In your described use, it seems like you could just leave the mag pouch and IFAK on when serving papers too.

On the other hand, given the socio-political climate, I can also see the value of trying to mitigate the effect of stupid people thinking that they're being oppressed by an over-militarized police force.

More or less. I reserve for a 6 man Constable's office now whose primary job is serving civil papers. I've been the decked out SWAT dude when I was doing the police thing full time. I try to do the kinder, gentler thing now due to the nature of the job and working for an elected official. My next step is the magnetic placard from Velocity Systems to move to an even lower profile plate set up.

This is why I wear plates serving papers though.

I see placards in a limited utility. For me its not about being able to switch loadouts (rifle to subgun, etc) but about scaling up or scaling down.

In a covert role, running slick is part of the job. Being able to scale up to spare mags and other tools of the trade when trouble comes, as that is no time to weave molle.

I ran an HSP chest rig as a placard years ago. I kept it under the seat or in the door panel depending on the vehicle we were in. It was nice to be able to kit up at a moments notice with nothing more than a pair of swift clips and some velcro. Obviously not as stable as weaving Molle, but it worked for us. I felt alot better with 4 more mags and blowout kit on my person as oppose to just the mag in the gun, the mag on my belt, and the TQ on my person.

In a totally non-professional use perspective, I dont wan to run around in full PC always when at the range or when using it for training around the house.  The ease of clipping a placard on/off is a no brainer to me.

I guess I see it from the complete opposite side as you. How is it not more useful and convenient having a placard vs having to constantly re-web pouches and gear?

Also the point above about driving is excellent. I recently drove with my PC on the for the first time and it was a good learning experience. If I had my placard on (and not removable) it would have been extremely difficult to drive due to the lack of space.

Swap pouches in 3 minutes???? LOL

Weaving MOLLE is a huge PITA. Want to go from 3 HSGI 5.56 Tacos to 4 or 5 MPX magazine carriers? That will take north of an hour. You’ll do that once before you’re ready to just buy a new plate carrier so that you don’t have to revert the process. Placards solve this problem.

Edit:

Also, going back and forth from SHTF battle rattle to grey man is a big plus.

It wasn't THAT hard to start a car with a hand crank at the front...

I know whenever I decide to rework my Molle belt, my thumbs hurt the next day.

When I swap placards, they don't.

It’s also nice when you’re switching rigs from a light vest to a heavy vest, or chest rig. No matter what your armor situation is, your mags and gear are in the same place.

Don’t think they are a gimmick, and absolutely see the utility. I take mine to classes and screw around with it in the house. I don’t use them, but I’ve only got a 3mag Esstac shingle and a TQ on my PC anyway. I personally have no need to change set ups.

I mean....if you would rather spend more time and effort to achieve the same end result, go for it. Do you also ride a horse to work?

I have a Ferro Slickster with a placard....the big advantage to me is being able to run the placard or not.  If I want to just wear the slickster under a jacket, I have that option and to me it being quick on/off makes me more likely to use it.

My thinking as well. Slick(ish) carrier:



And with Haley rig as a placard:



Modularity has proven to be a lot less useful to me than scalability. I have relatively basic needs out of this stuff, though.

How do you store your kit?  

I do not store my plates inside my carrier. My carrier hangs on an equipment cross that I made.  My plates are not stored inside it, my radio is not stored inside, my magazines are not stored in it, my water bladder is not full inside it, my PVS14 is not in my pouch that is attached to it, and my medical insert is not stored within the IFAK pouch that's attached to it. All that stuff is weight and it's not good for a hanging carrier to be under load all the time 24/7/365.  When it is time to "fo" I'm already going to have to slap all that stuff on/inside the carrier.  I've got to hook up my radio to the PTT cable and the Antenna Relocation cable.  So, I'm burning up time already just getting into my kit.  That's not counting the time it takes me to get boots on and get my helmet on, maybe install a cannister on my gas mask, and then do my PCC/PCI to make sure I'm good.  Where I can save time I want to save time. Where I can make things easier I want to make things easier.

The advantage to the placard is that I've got the Defense Mechanism placard actually shipping to me now (I'll do a write up here about it if anyone is interested). It's highly modular so I can adapt it to just three magazines or I can add a full zipper pouch or full pouch with flap, half pouches, pistol pouches, a second row of magazine pouches, and on and on, go check it out on their website.  I can keep it loaded up ready to go with everything in the pouches, I can have multiple other pouches for different items that I can add on if need be pretty quickly.  It just makes everything more plug and play.  I can also keep multiple placards ready to go.  I can have that is set-up if I have to go full on light infantry or one that is way more minimalistic.  It's easy to put on, I don't have to lay out my plate carrier on the floor and start weaving MOLLE adding more time.  I also don't have to think about anything if I keep preset multiple placards set-up and ready. I can just grab the different placard and attach.

Maybe one placard has my GPS and Compass in it for Navigation, but the other doesn't because I'm not always going to need to be able to do land nav.  Maybe I think I need to go to the 308 and so I'm going to want the mag pouches for it. It's just saving me time and saving me effort possible during a stressful situation (i.e. Soviet airborne dropping into my town, "Wolverines!")  

Here is the other advantage I see to the placard set-ups.  If a bro wants a more covert kit, something he can wear under a jacket or large button up shirt he can't conceal a slick carrier with a MOLLE attached front flap on it very well, he need to run it slick.  However, if things go sideways a bro may want to be able to get a long gun into play and then being able to slap on a placard in two seconds while wearing the slick carrier makes all kinds of sense.   This is probably a good idea if some civilian has to (obeying all laws of course) bug-out of an area that maybe hasn't yet reached Mad Max levels of apocalypse with guys swinging between vehicles screaming "Witness!", but is still high threat.  Said bro civilian probably wants that lower profile, but that ability to take it up a notch if the need arises.  Can't be like "Oh, hold on Immortal Joe, need to weave my MOLLE", because that's just going to be "Mediocre."

MOLLE front panels still have their place. No doubt. If I were doing maritime operations I don't trust velcro for that whatsoever.  If I thought I was really going to roll (i.e. BJJ ground fighting) a lot in a carrier, I mean a lot, MOLLE front panel might be the better way to go.  However, although I was hesitant about velcro at first it has won me over for my land lover (no pirate's life for me) style. That said, I think the G-hooks are a better option than the ITW clips, but reasonable minds can differ on that one.

Just FYI too, if you clean anything with velcro make sure you cover the velcro before cleaning it so that the velcro maintains maximum hook and loop security through its life.  Velcro will wear out over time if you don't do that and it's constantly getting scrubbed wet. Oh and yes, if you use your kit rather than just show it off to your bros it's going to get sweaty, dirty, probably muddy and you will need to clean it.

I use my placard as a chest rig when I don't want to run a full plate carrier. training classes, hot range days, whatever the case may be. buckles off the carrier and onto an H harness. All my mags and medical go with it.

Placards are an outside the box design for outside the box warriors. Sure conventional minds want conventional but outside the box minds want outside the box ideas and gear. If that’s not the case then how is it crye has a hold all throughout the military... with crye being one of the many outside the box designers.

I really hate weaving those damn things through.LOL I mainly want it for when I am taking a rifle class, because I run a 9mm Scorpion, but would be nice to run my AR part way through a class, and would be nice to make that change within seconds.

Weaving MOLLE is a pain.  Even worse if you're trying to do it outdoors in any kind of nonperfect weather.  

Kitting up already feels like suiting up as astronauts these days.  Remember when you could just toss an ALICE Y or H harness/belt on and call it good?  PCC/PCI is like you're doing the preflight check to Mars now days with all the electronics and other crap. If I can do anything to make it any less complicated and time consuming I'm doing it.

Do you also snip all of the PC stitching before storing since it is under under tension while holding layers of fabric together?

Holy wall of text.
I store mine shit horizontal.  No stress. No mess. Don't have to spend forever putting it back together.  And it airs out so less stink.

Kitting up is not that complicated. Armor on. Make sure shit is on that needs to be. Make sure the batteries are good to last. Head to toe in 30 seconds.

That has to be a troll post.

I dont know if placards are THAT much more than a few individual pouches.  That being said, I think its more of a convenience.  They make a qd attachment for my Atlas bipods.  I always bought the ones that use a screw.  After years of moving them around my different rifles, i wish i would have coughed up the extra $40 to have the qd mount.  This is basically the same thing...

DUDE, lol why are you rolling in a carrier.....  STAHP

I don't agree. My 4th deployment I had an M9, M4, M320, M14 and M249. I was also a M240 gunner at the beginning of the deployment and briefly had a shotgun. I tailored my load out to the mission.

Sometimes I just put my Eagle SAW pouches with the split lids and dividers on my chest rig. When I wasn't rocking my SAW they would hold 12 M4 mags.

The belted ammo pouches of our issued Isreali Hagor vests had an internal divider to make it into a 2 compartment 6 mag pouch (3 per compartment).
Back on the subjects, modular “panels” have been an idea that’s been around since forever, as early as 1960, but in the 80’s and 90’s there were vests that had modular panels attached mostly via snaps and Velcro (as someone pointed, Velcro alone was not ideal for maritime operations, they were mated to snaps that rusted, our Italian vests had velcro + paracord lacing), or twist lock buckles.
One of the advantages intended by MOLLE was also to quickly retailor your loadout.
I think the whole placard item started when chest rigs became popular due to mounted operations and guys started to rig chest rigs to body armors. Mostly to avoid the hassle of donning and doffing them without making it a 2 man job and having another set of shoulder straps around. I remember someone making integrated set of chest rigs attachable to armor carriers (SOTECH Callahan maybe?), as well as HSGI offering  later means to integrate an armor carrier to their rigs. Having a chest rig attached by buckles to an armor became popular, to the point that US army too had their, with the IOTV mated to the TAP panel. Since the standard was more or less a carrier with overlapping cummerbund and a flap closure as time progressed and loadout (for the lucky ones who could afford to carry just few items, not for the average ground pounder) slimmed a lot the natural solution was to integrate the front flap closure and the chest rig into one thing, the placard. The market and the fact that civilian shooters or  LE now tend to carry just few items did the rest. As of today a maker not having some kind of placard is almost unheard of.
I’d say:

PRO: less material, weight and bulk than molle mounted pouches, quickly reconfigurable from chest rig to armor mounted, as a corollary Armour or rigs are quickly reconfigurable to different placards. Also almost universal compatibility.

CONS: Front mounted pouches may not be the ideal positions for someone (not that shooting prone is the priority of placards users), velcro only mounting is not the sturdier solution (again, not a detriment for many, but some carriers have extra snaps to prevent flap closure from undoing if crawling)

In the end I think they are useful and having many styles on the market stimulates competition to make better products and keep cost down, even if I still wouldn’t discard a more traditional (Molle or non modular or even having carrying rig and armor as separate items) approach as useless if it fits your needs.

Well, riddle me this, if velcro is "perfectly fine" for maritime operations why do NSW guys insist on button closures for their combat uniforms?  Why don't they just go with velcro like everyone else? If water has no adverse effect on velcro why do they recommend covering up velcro on fatigues when washing? Have you ever gone swimming in a combat uniform that had a velcro waist like the Patagonia L9 without a belt, how did that work out for ya?

I am definitely going to move away from the equipment cross at some point, but I need to rig something up where my carrier can still air out.

Most companies recommend covering the velcro when washing so other stuff doesn't get snagged / tangled up in the velcro, or the velcro doesn't tear up other clothes in the wash.

Geez, that’s self explanatory, he must never wash his uniforms with Velcro, lol.


BTDT.....

Not NSW, but I know that the NSW combat uniforms have buttons added.  I suppose Maritime operations can cover a lot and doesn't require frequent submersion for sure, but I'd think you'd want something that held up well in such conditions if you were doing maritime.  Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe nobody cares about that?

I do wash my gear and I've had velcro closures wear out to the point that they no longer hook and loop closed well. I don't trust them to be exposed constantly to water and hold up, if you do then awesome bro you do you.